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Posted by Kate Butler Apr 30, 2007 |
Political fundraising for the 2008 presidential campaign is well under way: what this type of money-raising does for candidates is obvious. The ability to raise billions of dollars for your political party of choice makes it that much harder for the party stalwarts to not elect you come January and February of next year. In addition, showing early on that you are a candidate that can raise money well will get you extra media attention. As we have seen in earlier postings on this site about presidential candidacy announcements, it is becoming increasingly obvious that media coverage is paramount to many of the hopefuls’ campaigns.
This month, we have seen the first ‘quarter’ results of the fundraising efforts of those early frontrunners in the 2008 battle for both the Democrats and the Republicans. Overall, New York Senator Hillary Clinton is, as most expected, the leader: her team raised over $26 million in campaign contributions. Senator Barack Obama was close behind with $25 million, while the leader on the Republican side, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, raised $23 million.
All of these numbers are impressive, but it is the not the actual dollar amounts that matter when it comes to campaign media coverage. For example, it is telling that Romney, who is a relative newcomer on the national stage, was able to raise more than his better known Republican adversaries including John McCain and Rudy Giuliani (both of whom, for the record, had not formally announced they were running during this period).
For the media, statistics such as fundraising figures are often helpful when pundits want to handicap the race. Mitt Romney will undoubtedly get a boost in coverage, simply because he has raised more money than the two men leading the pack in popularity polls on the Republican side. For the Democrats, Obama has shown that he can keep up with the mighty Clinton campaign in terms of fundraising, and will continue to receive some very sustained media coverage for a first-term, relatively inexperienced Senator from the north.
While fundraising numbers may not be the best indicators of how popular a particular politician is, it is hard to deny how important they are to the media, and those who direct attention to specific candidates. For this reason alone, the April 2007 fundraising numbers may play an important part in the outcome of the presidential candidates on both sides of the aisle.